by SARAH ROWLAND

It's no masterpiece of modern cinema but at least everybody involved in Blade: Trinity, the latest installment of the action-packed, vampire slayer sci-fi trilogy, seems to know what movie they're in. Well almost everyone. Jessica Biel (a hybrid of Carré Otis and Jane March) tries really hard, but can scarcely emote enough sarcasm to foil the standard issue funny guy Ryan Reynolds. Even though the subtle nuances of his vampire fart jokes stand on their own, she still treats every line like this film is going to do for her what Speed did for Sandra Bullock. Somebody should have warned the abs-of-steel starlet that any movie shot in Vancouver is a surefire way to destroy a career (see Catwoman).

The only people who can walk away from this film with gold stars are Parker Posey and Callum Keith Rennie. Posey's Danica resurrects the centuries-old vampire eminence Drake to annihilate Blade (Wesley Snipes). Her signature sass and wit lend themselves well to a cartoon caricature of a blood sucker, whose vagina is rumoured to have its own set of fangs. You read right. This, by the way, is the kind of mind-boggling humour director David S. Goyer unapologetically subjects us to, which brings us to Rennie. See him as you've never seen him before: he plays one of Danica's thugs and he gets some meaty shit-kicking sequences, especially in the good vs. evil crescendo at what looks like the B.C. law courts. And not once does Vancouver's most sensitive indie dramatist break down into tears, nor hold a terminally long and pensive look.

The story this time round feeds on America's fear of chemical warfare. Blade, exiled after a vicious smear campaign and mourning the loss of his three-time sidekick (Kris Kristofferson), finds himself slumming it with a less experienced team of slayers known as the Nightstalkers (headed up by Biel and Reynolds). Their scheme to create an airborne, vampire-killing virus from Drake's DNA introduces an element of moral complexity to our story. That same virus will snuff Blade too! Sadly, this glued-on allegory is already overshadowed by a much more potent metaphor: that of Snipe's career.

Blade: Trinity is now playing

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